Blackstone and Starwood Merging Rental Home Portfolios to Create $11 Billion Company

CoStar Group (Aug. 10, Heschmeyer) has learned that The Blackstone Group's Invitation Homes and Starwood Waypoint Homes, two of the nation's biggest rental-home owners, are combining in a 100 percent stock-for-stock merger. This would create one of the largest owners of rental homes in the country, with approximately 82,000 single-family rental properties. The combined entity, which will operate under the Invitation Homes banner, will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "INVH." Under terms of the deal, each Starwood Waypoint Homes share will be converted into 1.614 Invitation Homes shares, with Invitation Homes stockholders owning nearly 59 percent of the combined company's shares. The equity market capitalization of the combined company would be approximately $11 billion and the total enterprise value, factoring in debt, would be around $20 billion.